John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC) on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was fatally shot while traveling with his wife Jacqueline, Texas governor John Connally, and the latter's wife Nellie, in a Presidential motorcade. Kennedy is the most recent of the four Presidents who were assassinated. He followed Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield and William McKinley, all of them fatally shot.

The ten-month investigation by the Warren Commission, 1963–1964, concluded that the President was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone and that Jack Ruby acted alone when he killed Oswald before he could stand trial. These conclusions were initially supported by the American public; however, polls conducted from 1966 to 2004 found that as many as 80 percent of Americans have suspected that there was a plot or cover-up.

Contrary to the Warren Commission, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1979 concluded that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The HSCA found both the original FBI investigation and the Warren Commission Report to be seriously flawed. While agreeing with the Commission that Oswald fired all the shots which caused the wounds to Kennedy and Governor Connally, it stated that there were at least four shots fired and that there was "...a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President." The HSCA did not identify any person or group involved in the assassination besides Oswald, but they did specifically say the CIA, Soviet Union, organized crime and several other groups were not involved, though they could not rule out the involvement of individual members of those groups. The assassination is still the subject of widespread debate and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories and alternative scenarios.